STAN HAYES CHRONICLES THE JACK MASON SAGA...

A sexy God? Why not?

-Tom McGuane

That's the word from best-selling author Tom Mcguane on the first novel of the Jack Mason Saga, The Rough English Equivalent... And Amazon reviewers say: "I bought it on the strength of Mcguane's endorsement... a HELL of a book!... an Altman movie, SCREAMING to be made!" The Saga's second novel, The Quintessence of Quick , continues to follow Jack's life and loves as he flies with the world-famous hurricane-hunting Storm Chasers. And coming up later this year, the Saga's third book, Time to Climb!

Cocktail Chat: Newsletter of The Jack Mason Saga, Summer 2012

Depiction of a particle collision in CERN's Large Hadron Collider, in the Search for Higgs

[This article's provided in Cocktail Chat's ongoing commitment to provide coverage of cutting-edge developments in physics that converge, over millenia, to enable Jack Mason's ultimate transition to a massless force field in the Fifth Millenium.]

By Brid-Aine ParnellPosted in Physics, 24th July 2012

Special report- Now that all the fanfare over the sighting of a Higgs-like boson in the Large Hadron Collider has died down, CERN scientists have a few burning questions about the spotted particle.

The gigantic proton accelerator will be shut down this year, but physicist Paris Sphicas told The Register the boffins should be able to gather enough data about the particle's properties to tackle two of their conundrums before the big switch-off.

For those still baffled by last month's discovery, the proposed Higgs boson helps explain how everything around us actually exists: its own existence suggests that the Higgs field is real and that particles moving through this omnipresent field gain mass. The boson is therefore vital in propping up the Standard Model, which is modern science's least incomplete explanation of how the universe works.

However, although the Higgs field in theory gives everything else mass, it doesn't appear to be giving mass to the boson itself, a mystery that can only be answered with further study of this Higgs-like particle. In order to confirm the spotted Higgs-like boson is the sought-after elusive elementary particle, it has to have certain properties, such as what particles it decays into and how often it decays into specific particles.

"If the Higgs is the guy who gives mass to everybody then its coupling - in other words the strength with which it engages the other particles - will be proportional to mass," explained Sphicas, a physicist working on the collider's general-purpose experiment CMS.

"So if you count how often it goes to particle A, B or C, that frequency should be strictly given by the mass of these particles." Another important property of a Higgs boson is how it decays: a uniform manner will indicate the boson has "zero spin", otherwise it would be all over the place and therefore probably some other particle. The Higgs boson spin has to be zero because of its quantum nature.

"If that angular distribution of the stuff it breaks into is totally spherically symmetric, that would be spin zero. If it's anything else that would be one of the known particles," Sphicas said. These are the answers that CERN hopes to find before the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is powered off and spruced up for its run at the highest energy level it can achieve: 14 teraelectron volts in 2015.

"Already, what we found is a boson, we know it's a boson, no doubt," the physicist said."What we don't know is whether it decays isotropically or not, that we will know by the end of the year, or it will be in the data that we collect by the end of the year so it may take a bit longer to get the results. "The first hint of how often it decays to the different types of particles will also be obtained with the same data that we collect up to the end of the year. And the reason is that we will have enough events to see the new boson not just in the two channels we saw it in so far but also in a few others," he added.

So surely that'll be it, then: the spin is shown to be zero and the mass-giving mechanism checked, telling the boffins this is the Higgs boson. But actually, no, as Sphicas puts it, if this boson is the Higgs, that's the point at which the fun really starts. This is just the end of the beginning. The Standard Model of our universe isn't actually looking all that tidy with the Higgs as it's currently described. There are problems with it – and the main hitch is why the Higgs field doesn't build the actual Higgs boson into a massive particle.

"The same mechanism via which the Higgs gives mass to all the other particles would give mass to itself," he said, adding: "Think of it this way: imagine the Higgs field as some sort of sea of water through which all the particles swim. Some particles encounter more resistance and some less, the ones that encounter more get massive and the others are the less massive ones.

Now a molecule of water also swims through all the other molecules of water so it also encounters resistance to its motion. What that means is that the more massive it is, the more it will interact with the Higgs field but the more it interacts the more massive it will become and that will mean the more interaction and in fact if you go through the math, you calculate that the same mechanism that gives mass to all the other particles would imply that the guy that does this has to have infinite mass itself.

The Higgs boson doesn't have infinite mass, so where does all that mass go? The two main theories are supersymmetry or extra dimensions - invisible or unseen places to stuff all the bits of the boffins' sums that don't come out right. Supersymmetry, affectionately known as SUSY, posits a sort of mirror world where all the elementary particles are partnered by particles related to them that we can't observe. That mirror world would interact with our world in a way that would stop the Higgs boson becoming infinitely massive.

"There's two problems in our understanding of nature right now, one is dark matter and dark energy and the second is if this guy is the Higgs and therefore we've just found every single building block of visible matter, how can the Higgs not be infinite?" Sphicas said."Supersymmetry could be the answer to both," he added, admitting that he was a proponent of the theory.

Jack Takes Command of "the Scow," ContinuesTradition of Contact With Eons of Earth's Civilizations!

[Witnesses naturally (but mistakenly) assume that a craft that performs like "The Scow" is of extraterrestrial origin]

From a witness in Arizona: "We watched it go out over the valley and as it did the light pattern now appeared to have a V shape, with the point down. It was as if it was in a low orbit around the curvature of the earth that was only 100 feet or so over the elevation of my house and on a course that had exactly intersected the street right in front of my house and continued straight through a notch in the mountain peaks. It was like a huge arrow being launched from the distant northwest that shot right through the small notch in our mountain peaks at Hatcher Pass. We watched it for a few more minutes as it continued its course out over the valley. Finally we lost the 5 lights in the mix of other aircraft lights and atmosphere over Phoenix.

Once it was out of sight, we all continued to stand outside and talk. We were all excited because we knew we had just had the most unique experience in the world. We certainly couldn’t talk about the complete meaning of the event at that moment. It would literally take me months of daily reflection on my memory of the event to decipher so much information. But at that moment, when the craft had just passed over us, I summed up all my immediate perceptions and feelings and thoughts into one conclusion: this craft was not from this world. As a matter of fact, right after the craft passed over and I was watching move away, I said to my wife, “whoever has this technology must be in cahoots with God”.

I know that some people might not want to hear me speak of God and UFO’s in the same breath, but my comment about God is part of what happened at that moment and is very much a part of this sighting. There is no satisfactory worldly explanation for what we saw. Realize that lots of folks saw the lights from various distances and angles, and some videotaped them. A few witnesses also saw the actual structure with the lights set in it. Our family was fortunate enough to see the whole thing close up. This craft is a reality, and anyone that saw any part of its activity, recognized that it was completely out of the normal human experience on the earth. But this craft is now part of that human experience, and if you ask most of the humans that experienced it, they would say it was probably an extraterrestrial craft.

In regards to my family, it comes down to believing us that we are being honest and truthful in describing the fantastic details of what we experienced. If you were to ask me what I think about it, I would say that it is an extraterrestrial craft. I say this because the science and technology of this amazing craft is not understood or explainable by anyone from our world. What we saw is “impossible”, and yet we did see it. And what we saw was so geometrical and acted under such absolute control, that I had the overwhelming impression that it was of human origin.

The novels of the Jack Mason Saga are now available as Amazon Kindle editions! Kindle owners, and users of Amazon's free Kindle for PC application, may now enjoy the Saga's story and characters at a minor fraction of the cost ($9.99) of the printed editions. And the news is even better for Amazon Prime customers, who may read the Saga free of charge! See details and order at JMS Saga on Kindle.

The Amazon Kindle is a series of e-book readers now in its fourth generation. Amazon Kindle eReaders enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media via wireless networking. At the close of 2010, Amazon announced that in the United States, their e-book sales had surpassed sales of paperback books for the first time.

The e-book boom, of which Kindle's a major part, is just one indication that book publishing is undergoing a serious readjustment. Some cite Borders’ recent failure, but for most the prevailing assumption seems to be that anyone who takes the trouble to write a book- a good book- will, sooner or later, find a market for his work. The truth is, I've yet to talk to an author who began writing as an economic exercise. Writers write because it's an itch that absolutely has to be scratched. But writers who KEEP writing must bear the ultimate destination of the work, the marketplace, firmly in mind.

And, as noted above, the marketplace has changed in a major way, with much more change to come. Jeff Bezos saw the handwriting on the wall in 1994, founding Amazon in his garage. His foresight and ability have made the company the largest book retailer in the world. According to Forbes, Amazon's shares have "defied gravity" in 2011, too, jumping 55%, adding $6.5 billion to his net worth.

Novel writers serve the most fickle segment of the publishing market, so when I finished book #1,The Rough English Equivalent, I decided to forego the classic query letters and multiple mailings of manuscripts to prospective agents. Instead, I published the book with a "print on demand" (POD) publisher.

The result was a beautifully crafted book, complete with its International Standard Book Number (ISBN), pricing, and listing on Amazon. When I saw MY book on MY Amazon page, I changed my focus that day. NO pursuit of agents and "regular" publishers; I’d promote my books’ presence on Amazon as both author and publisher, AKA Highside Press.

There is, however, something even more important than the absolute control that the online book marketer retains over his creation. That's the ability to carry on a running dialogue with his readers. It goes beyond the fun of sharing background thoughts and inside information with you, my Cocktail Chat subscribers, and of your sharing your thoughts about The Jack Mason Saga's books by putting your reviews of them on My Amazon Page.

And for two-way communication, just go to the Saga’s Facebook Fan Page. There we can discuss any Saga factor- characters, motivation, historical background- or absolutely anything else that might occur to you or me at a particular day and time. Just go to The Jack Mason Saga.

Thanks, everyone, for following Jack, our flesh-and-blood contemporary, forward in time as he transcends the human body's limits and becomes a massless force field, unencumbered by the constraints of time and place. I'm looking forward with pleasure to entertaining the hell out of you!

The JMS Task Force...

As I've said in earlier Cocktail Chats, the world's changed a lot in the past hundred years, but what's coming in the new century will make the 20th look like it had its feet stuck in molasses. All of the physical sciences- physics, biochemistry, cybernetics, metallurgy and several more- are converging, at an explosively increasing rate, on the objective of extending human life expectancy. The ultimate result of that convergence? At this point, no one can say. But one thing's for sure; IT'S THE BIG STORY of this century, hands down.The Jack Mason Saga's second novel, The Quintessence of Quick

Speculating about it, of course, is what makes The Jack Mason Saga really fun- too damn much fun not to share with as many readers as possible! So, Cocktail Chatters, please:Ask a friend, one friend, whom you're certain will follow through on your request, to subscribe to Cocktail Chat.

The more I can pass along about the projected future of humanity, the more likely you are to become a kind of evangelist for the Saga. To become, if you choose, a member of the ad hoc Jack Mason Saga Task Force. You know what word-of-mouth and customer referrals are worth, so please help me spread the word and I'll do everything I can to insure that everyone enjoys reading the Saga as much as I enjoy writing it!